Reviews for On a shoestring to Coorg

The average rating for On a shoestring to Coorg based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-21 00:00:00 George Ohlin This is a diary style book, with diversions into the local history, the local culture and some of the many people that the author a her five year old daughter come into contact with on their four month travels in Coorg, in 1973/74. Never a fan of big cities, Murphy heads out of Bombay relatively quickly, and spends only a few days in Goa before finding a place they like, and base themselves in Coorg (now renamed Kodagu), a district in Karnataka. From there they take shorter excursions, returning to stay a couple of months and for a short while become a part of the village community. I really enjoy Murphy's writing. For me, she gets the balance right. She writes about the things I find interesting, and she gets the mix right - explains in detail some things and skims over others, and for me at least it all works. I also find her pretty amusing, which I know not all people do. Like others I felt some apprehension about the fact her five year old daughter Rachel joined her in her travels (this is the first book which Rachel features, although I have read a later book - Where the Indus Is Young: Walking to Baltistan which also features Rachel). Initially, for the author, Rachel accompanying her means she is not on her bicycle, and cannot undertake the hiking or climbing to the same extent, and so is on trains and buses more than your usual Dervla Murphy book, but really for a five year old, Rachel is pretty easy work. She is ridiculously independent and seems to have common sense beyond her years - well she is portrayed that way in the book... Really her presence adds to the book, and doesn't diminish the story at all. I found it pretty amusing the way the author was quite happy for Rachel to make her own experiences, despite the risks. It is fair to say this lack of parental guidance in 1974, was still pretty unusual, but I can't see the same level of trust (trust in good luck maybe?) now. Having literally just arrived at their first hotel in Bombay: ... I saw her disappearing up the street with two new-found Indian friends. It seems she has gone to lunch with someone; I felt too exhausted to find out exactly with whom, or where. P5. And another example (of several) at a wildlife sanctuary in Thekkady After lunch I left Rachel playing in the jungle near the hotel - where there were two tame elephants and lots of non-shy langurs to entertain her - while I walked halfway back to Kumili in search... P157. And another quote I stumbled on while looking for child abandonment examples: At a little distance from the Co-operative building, on the edge of the forest, stands our 'local', a ramshakle cottage from which Subaya every morning procures my breakfast litre of palm-tody for 50 paise. (Where else nowadays could one buy a litre of beer for 2 1/2 pence?) ... If one neglects to drink it within a few hours it is said to do terrible things to the innards, so at last I have an excuse for drinking beer with my breakfast. The Coorgs think it so health-giving that even elderly female pillars of respectability habitually have a glass (but not, admittedly, a litre) before breakfast. P187, (her brackets). Excellent stuff.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-10 00:00:00 Dean Donaldson Dervla Murphy is one of my heroes. An Irish woman, she has travelled the world on a shoestring, getting around by foot, donkey and bicycle. I first came across her work when I was looking information about Africa and took The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe out of the library. Fascinating reading, with much to say about Central Africa, including how AIDS was transmitted along a major international highway, and, well before the horrible genocide in Rwanda, the way that Tutsis, pushed out of Rwanda in an earlier conflict, were waiting in Uganda to return. This time I was looking for portraits of South India for my next book project. (Called Unidentical Twins, it will compare various political entities that are the same yet very different, including the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.) During the trip that Murphy recounts in this book, she takes her five year old daughter on the pair's first major expedition, and the account is fascinating. They travel very light: two backpacks, one small enough for little Rachel to carry, and that's it. The time is December and January 1973-74, and while they have contacts to visit, the pair are very much on their own. Rachel is a trooper, as is her Mum. They have mishaps--including a bout of brucellosis, not a disease you mess with--but they see people, places and things that few Western travellers did at that point. Travelling with a child opens new possibilities too. Well into her 80s, Murphy continues to travel. Rachel's early experiences apparently had no bad effects: one of Murphy's most recent books tells of her travels with Rachel and Rachel's three daughters in Cuba, The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba. That one sounds like it should be good to read in this post-Fidel Castro days.